SHORT STORIES | 2004 | 320 pages

From the tale of a childless Chilean couple with an antiseptic life philosophy to an account of a desperate man who "disappears" himself in Texas, dreaming that someone actually wants to find him, Shorts opens our eyes to the reality of rich kids from poor countries swilling their cosmopolitans in New York, scared to death of their own homelands, and shows the influence of American pop culture on the hearts and minds of those who have never set foot in "Yankee Bohemia."

Unsettling and enlightening, Shorts conveys the American phenomenon of self-invention at its most extreme, as the culturally confounded rage against deflated fantasies in the face of obstinate realities.